FONG CHUNG-RAY

The partnership will inaugurate with Fong Chung-Ray: Meditations in Abstraction (October 29 – December 20, 2025), the artist’s first-ever solo exhibition in New York, presenting over six decades of work that trace the evolution of an artist who helped define a trans-Pacific language of abstraction.

Fong’s practice has continuously bridged Eastern philosophy and Western modernism. Trained in Taiwan and later influenced by Abstract Expressionism during his Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, he developed an experimental approach that merges the gestural energy of American painting with the contemplative sensibility of Chinese calligraphy. His innovations—including the fabrication of a coarse palm-fiber brush in the 1960s, the use of acrylic to emulate ink, and the development of a unique “reverse rubbing” transfer technique produced richly textured, time-worn surfaces reminiscent of weathered walls and ancient manuscripts.

Since the 1980s, Fong has incorporated Buddhist sutras into his compositions, transforming sacred text into visual rhythm. These inscriptions, sometimes legible and sometimes effaced, evoke the essence of meditation—an inquiry into form, formlessness, and the impermanence of all appearances. Art historian Mark Dean Johnson has described his work as “simultaneously ancient and contemporary... balancing damage and elegance, chaos and clarity, transparency and solidity.”

Fong’s career embodies a transnational trajectory that expands the canon of postwar abstraction. His works are held in major institutions worldwide, including the Ashmolean Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Centre Pompidou, Denver Art Museum, Kaohsiung Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M+ Museum, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art, Spencer Museum of Art, and Taipei Fine Arts Museum and many others, with a monumental painting permanently installed at the San Francisco International Airport.

Alisan Fine Arts is excited to support Fong Chung-Ray’s legacy through curated exhibitions, institutional partnerships, and scholarly initiatives that affirm his central place in the story of global abstraction.